How long will Elite Dangerous rule the world of space games?

[Vorxian]

Yup, being a High Sec Dweller can be quite dangerous. Also there is no "minding my own business" in EvE, the moment you undock is the moment you consent to PvP. Hint: EvE = Everybody versus Everybody.
Maybe you should have tried Hello Kitty, it looks as it would have been the better choice. Private Server Option in EvE, god, my sides. Go play Lego!

It's a classic case of make something absolutely fantastic, then right before serving add some dog-poo.

EvE has so much scope, yet they smother it into oblivion with this obsession with Everyone vs Everyone nonsense. It creates stress and toxicity at levels Elite Dangerous couldn't begin to comprehend. Sure ED has it's own maniacal and humorous players just playing the mechanics, but compared to EvE, I'd buy anyone here in ED a beer, rather than want to gut them with whatever I can find in my car toolbox, which is the default feeling I get playing EVE. [heart] Too much stress. I have enough stress managing my EMEA peers, without playing a game that invokes blood pressure red-lining.

I'm all compliments to ED today. Makes me appreciate DB, the Frontier team, and the ED community when compared to 'other' spacey games

 

[ZeroAi]

That's as maybe...but it DOES pretty much mean that NMS isn't a Space Flight/Combat Game/Sim-lite doesn't it? Candy Crush does things better than Elite (accessibility, portability across multiple platforms, ease of play etc etc) that doesn't mean its a better SPACE FLIGHT game does it?

You totally didn't read what I wrote.

Fact: NMS does many things better than Elite in the "Space Game" genre - that's what this thread is titled. Examples:
- Planets full of life and caverns/caves all exploreable on foot or in a vehicle
- Multiple Surface Vehicle Types
- User created / owned Bases / Carriers
- Optional Story Arc

That said, I prefer Elite primarily due to its multiplayer, and also it's sci fi space ship flight model.

First, I've seen pretty much every possible rumour about SF, we simply dont know anything at all. Secondly, NMS is great if you dont care the slightest bit about astronomy and space. The very idea that you approach a purple planet, which then magically becomes completely brown when you go through the atmosphere, is hilarious. They are all the same size, there is no sense behind any of them. Its just wacky 70s fiction. Which is fun, but 'blows away ED' is a bit... much. SC planets are a handful of tiles copy pasted all over the surface, and by far the least impressive of the three. And the other two actually work.

I guess your post really demonstrates that different people look for different things.

Did you miss the rumor about SF targeting SC and ED? True it's just a rumor, but its a rumor that SF is a space game, a genre shared with ED, and the topic of this thread.

I agree that FDev tries to emulate the Milky Way and does a good job, while NMS emulates a fictional galaxy.

That said, ED's galaxy, star systems, and planets aren't always very accurate, and from patch to patch the planet's color changes drastically. And the Planets we do have good pictures of aren't always represented correctly in ED.

As far as "blowing away," without a doubt the planet surfaces in NMS and SC are more varied when compared to the moon like landable planets in ED.

Don't get me wrong, I believe ED makes moon like planets look just amazing, but today that's all it does.

And when compared to NMS and SC's other planet types, ED's planets seem barren to me.

 

[lysan]

I love the Elite universe and also the feeling you get when you fly around, what I don't like is that the game feels like it's made by bolting on stuff and there is no connection. The NPC crew is very shallow or non existence, the multicrew is just Meh? no life around bases but ships? combat areas are like closed arenas, and so on and so forth.

 

[Oss133]

Freespace

Freespace 2

 

[Stigbob]

Freespace

Freespace 2

And all the mods for them.

 

[Serpentis Ictis]

Elite 2 rules the roost. No better. Seriously, blasphemy if you say otherwise!! ����

 

[Ian Skippy]

Pretty much the crown will be taken by force and the king forced to parade naked, take the new Space game by Bethesda coming either this year or next, they just need to blatantly copy Elite which wouldn't be difficult, the game is barebones as of now, even if the stellar forge is revolutionary, a big budget company like Zenimax can have 150 cracking it's code to know how it works and they can make their own version of it, add the Bethesda writing, quests, dev experience and most of all budget on top and you got yourself a pretty g good space game that can dethrone elite the moment they show their first gameplay trailer

Or Star Citizen, which if it delivers (most likely won't imo that thing reeks of a scam) you got yourself the definity space game that will certainly crush every competition

Considering EA tried to create a procgen system and failed, having to scrap all of it for ME:A, and that CIG has been unable to come up with anything beyond 'randomly copy&paste use tiles across the surface' I think you kinda are a bit too optimistic about how easy everything is. They also have absolutely NO experience at all in this field whatsoever. I dig pretty much everything they do, and both TES and Fallout are among my favourite series, but its just too silly that every time somewhere a game seems vaguely space-related people here automatically assume it will soon 'dethrone Elite. We've had that stuff happen with NMS, CoD:IW, Star Citizen for half a decade now ([haha]); lets just wait and see if you can even fly a spaceship in Bethesda's new game.

FWIW: I would be super surprised if they have a spaceship focussed game at all. Much more likely is a FPS focussed game, because that is what they always do, with maybe spaceships as a space-horse.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I have been taking a brief look at other upcoming space games. Some are marvelous, others are average and many are just terrible.

In one of my articles, I stated that Elite, the pioneer of space games returned thirty years later to take the crown from Eve Online, which had ruled the space game world for fifteen years. Director Braben commented that Elite Dangerous will revolutionise science fiction from the fantastic Star Wars' quality to realistic quality. And that seems to be happening through the new space games coming up. Nearly all of them possess the features peculiar to space games including reasonable physics engineering but they are expensive to construct. It's diverse, qualitative and competitive now in all the alpha and beta releases. And they are coming to change the gaming world everywhere and inspire our ambition to reach the future.

Now the question I want to ask is: How competent will Elite Dangerous be when these games are established. Will it have advanced further than them all or its crown will be taken and given to _____?

30 years later? Elite may have been released in 1984, but Frontier: Elite 2 was released in 1993 and Frontier: First Encounters was released in 1995. Elite: Dangerous was officially released in 2014. Either you're crap at maths or crap at research.

 

[Stigbob]

30 years later? Elite may have been released in 1984, but Frontier: Elite 2 was released in 1993 and Frontier: First Encounters was released in 1995. Elite: Dangerous was officially released in 2014. Either you're crap at maths or crap at research.

Space travel and time dilation are old friends, or young depends how fast you are going.

 

[Tyger]

Who said it 'rules' the space game genre? I don't think it does. Not at all..........

 

[dreamer1986]

It doesn't... There are a lot of great space games of different types out there, like Kerbal Space Program, Homeworld Remastered, Rebel Galaxy, Freespace 2 (which is considered the best space game, ahead of Elite Dangerous, according to some review sites), Freelancer, Everspace, Space Engineers, FTL, Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space 2, X3 Terran Conflict, Eve Online ...

In short, Elite doesn't "rule the world of space games", not even close.

 

[Stigbob]

It doesn't... There are a lot of great space games of different types out there, like Kerbal Space Program, Homeworld Remastered, Rebel Galaxy, Freespace 2 (which is considered the best space game, ahead of Elite Dangerous, according to some review sites), Freelancer, Everspace, Space Engineers, FTL, Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space 2, X3 Terran Conflict, Eve Online ...

In short, Elite doesn't "rule the world of space games", not even close.

Depends how you define a space game, I'd say it has numerous subgenres and the games you've named are all mostly good in their own way but provide different things.

Space RTS has two sub categories good ones like Homeworld (not remastered it has the bad controls from homeworld 2) and bad ones that only operate in two dimensions like EVE or sins where you could reskin it with tanks and change not very much at all about how it plays.

X-series are limited galaxy excellent mogul games with half baked flight models.

Kerbal little green dude fiery doom and wonky contraption construction simulator and laughathon.

Freelancer casual mouse flight mini space game with dreadful cutscenes.

Freespace2 king of the mods, great for single player campaigns.

ED is undisputed king of it's genre, that being huge open world spacedowhateveryoulikeulator and is why I like it so much.

 

[dreamer1986]

Depends how you define a space game, I'd say it has numerous subgenres and the games you've named are all mostly good in their own way but provide different things.

Space RTS has two sub categories good ones like Homeworld (not remastered it has the bad controls from homeworld 2) and bad ones that only operate in two dimensions like EVE or sins where you could reskin it with tanks and change not very much at all about how it plays.

X-series are limited galaxy excellent mogul games with half baked flight models.

Kerbal little green dude fiery doom and wonky contraption construction simulator and laughathon.

Freelancer casual mouse flight mini space game with dreadful cutscenes.

Freespace2 king of the mods, great for single player campaigns.

ED is undisputed king of it's genre, that being huge open world spacedowhateveryoulikeulator and is why I like it so much.

You haven't really countered my argument. Each can be called "king" in its subgenre, and every game can be a "king" with such a definition.

But to generalize and say that ED is king of the entire space genre is wrong, like I mentioned.

And Eve and Sins are in no way bad, Eve has a larger following than Elite, and sins is a good space strategy game.

 

[Xenith]

It doesn't... There are a lot of great space games of different types out there, like Kerbal Space Program, Homeworld Remastered, Rebel Galaxy, Freespace 2 (which is considered the best space game, ahead of Elite Dangerous, according to some review sites), Freelancer, Everspace, Space Engineers, FTL, Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space 2, X3 Terran Conflict, Eve Online ...

In short, Elite doesn't "rule the world of space games", not even close.

I'm still waiting for the guys behind Rebel Galaxy to properly reveal their next space game. I don't know about you, but that's an instant buy the moment it comes out!

 

[Guyperson]

I'm looking forward to X4 from Egosoft.
I love the X series.

The empire building is great but the UI was always a mess, english voice acting completely janky and their storytelling is hard to stomach. Also the speed and range of most weapons in earlier iterations... In M1/M2s it felt like you could reach further or land hits faster than your HEPTs and PPCs if you just threw projectiles out an airlock by hand.

As much as I was a fan of the X - series, I can not defend the last iteration of their game.

Moving away from their normal formula and into more story and narrative was a mistake. They were very much out of their depth.

 

[Xenith]

Moving away from their normal formula and into more story and narrative was a mistake. They were very much out of their depth.

It's a difficult situation for the dev, if you keep doing the same thing over and over, people will hate on you for it. If you do something different, people will hate on you for it, and demand the same thing over and over. No win situation.

 

[Stigbob]

You haven't really countered my argument. Each can be called "king" in its subgenre, and every game can be a "king" with such a definition.

But to generalize and say that ED is king of the entire space genre is wrong, like I mentioned.

And Eve and Sins are in no way bad, Eve has a larger following than Elite, and sins is a good space strategy game.

I said ED was king of it's sub-genre, and it is. But then I like vast free-roam space games, that's why I like ED and is exactly what I bought it for. The campaigns in freespace are excellent but there's no free roam at all, you can't even select your own ship. They are different genre's, appreciate the strengths of both don't expect either to be both. As for overall best game of them all it's ED hands down, galaxy sized galaxy fantastic flight model and I can do as I please none of the others come close. I'll still play some of them but ED's easily the best.

As for EVE and sins without three dimensional movement they are just simplistic cookie cutter RTS games, they have a space backdrop but there's nothing special or spacey going on at all. Supreme commander is a better RTS than both. From my point of view they are not even worth buying.

Homeworld does a similar RTS thing but in a much better way as you can KHAN!!! stuff, but then I like my space games to have some space in them.

 

[krylite]

As for overall best game of them all it's ED hands down, galaxy sized galaxy fantastic flight model and I can do as I please none of the others come close. I'll still play some of them but ED's easily the best.

As for EVE and sins without three dimensional movement they are just simplistic cookie cutter RTS games, they have a space backdrop but there's nothing special or spacey going on at all. Supreme commander is a better RTS than both. From my point of view they are not even worth buying.

Homeworld does a similar RTS thing but in a much better way as you can KHAN!!! stuff, but then I like my space games to have some space in them.

I'd agree, Eve is really just an RTS with a whole lot of MMO & space-rpg gameplay added on top of it which is still mostly on a text/paper&pencil level, FASA turned into the StarTrek: Starfleet Command games magnified and combined with homeworld styled fleet rts.

Interestingly ED is a more sci/fi realistic Star Trek sim than the Star Trek games themselves. Most of the time in supercruise, one is travelling the equivalent between warp 1 to approaching warp 10 in a star system. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive#Warp_velocities ) (Going by the revised Okuda scale for star trek warp speeds, assuming ED's hyperjumping approximates to average 2Ly per second (for a 20Ly FSD jumprange) comes out roughly to 63,072,000c , and ~ Warp 219 ! , for the short time in hyperspace (which would also be 3.6 hours to Sag A from Sol at constant hyperspace travel at the aforementioned Warp 219 ~ 2Ly/s ! , and 16.8 days to the Andromeda Galaxy! edit: well, maybe the DS9<->Gamma quadrant wormhole is faster )
On the tv shows, it took the characters and the ships literally a day to travel 4-8 or so Ly where the Hutton outpost 0.2 Ly travel is just typically part of their day to day job/tour. Just that you didn't see all the duty shifts and waiting and sleep cycles with the cutting between commercial breaks or scenes in an episode. The awesome scale of the space sim allows a virtual tour and travel experience of a similar interstellar tech sci-fi universe not just to Trek, but many other hard sci-fi galaxies imagined over the history of science fiction.

 

[Exeider]

I'm looking forward to X4 from Egosoft.
I love the X series.

Oh god yes, if it only had multiplayer.....

Why is it EVERY space sim game is always ALMOST perfect save for one feature....

 

[ZeroAi]

"I" think Elite is the #1 Modern Open World Spaceship flying game.

Runner ups include (imo)
- Star Citizen
- No Mans Sky

Why is it EVERY space sim game is always ALMOST perfect save for one feature....

So True